Buses in the District are slow and unreliable as its riders already know, but five key improvements could make them much more useful. That’s what the first-ever DC Metrobus report card study from the Coalition for Smarter Growth and MetroHero found.

The study was developed from real-time data collected in May 2019 by MetroHero. It shows that the District’s major bus routes suffer from poor reliability and sluggish speeds, which contribute to the system’s declining ridership. The companion joint report includes best practices, recommendations, and updates on recent steps by DC and Metro.

Bus service – essential and in trouble

Metrobus ridership in DC has dropped by a startling 12% over the last five years, a steeper annual decline than many peer cities including Chicago, New York City, and Atlanta. Metrobus, however, remains an important way for people to get around DC. On an average weekday, Metrobuses transport over 200,000 riders around the District on 298 miles of roadway, providing essential access to jobs and services far beyond the reach of Metrorail.

Bus service in DC is especially critical for low-income residents and people of color: These riders make up an overwhelming 82% of all Metrobus passengers, and 53% of riders earn under $30,000 a year, which is considered extremely low income.

The study collected data throughout May 2019 for 34 routes in the city’s nine high-ridership priority bus corridors, and the findings demonstrate the systemic challenges Metrobus riders encounter on a daily basis. The data show service is largely unreliable and unpredictable, with buses regularly arriving much later than scheduled, and headways rarely maintained. Buses showed up on time only 60% of the time over the entire month.

Meanwhile, bus speeds averaged just 9.5 mph over the entire month, which is consistent with the historical trends showing Metrobus speeds across the entire system getting slower every year. The poor performance of these 34 high-ridership bus routes earned the system a collective grade of “D.”

Image by the author.

Here’s what could make service better

The report makes recommendations in five key areas to improve speed, service reliability, and on-time performance for buses in the District, all drawn from best practices:

Dedicated bus lanes: Give buses priority on the roadways in their own dedicated lanes to reduce delays caused by traffic congestion and allow for greater reliability;

Faster boarding: Implement all-door boarding and cashless payment options to make the boarding process faster and more efficient, reducing dwell time at stops;

Despite DC’s poor grades, the District government (which controls the roads and signals, and pays for transit service) and Metro (which operates Metrobuses and collects fares) are taking steps to turn around the bus system. DDOT recently implemented pilot bus lanes on H and I streets downtown, and is on track to run bus lanes on 16th Street and K Street in the near future. The city has also implemented traffic signal priority and queue jumps on several corridors.

DC and Metro launched their first limited-stop MetroExtra service (Georgia Avenue’s 79 route) in 2007 and the Priority Corridor Network initiative in 2008. The two agencies have adopted a number of best practices and service improvements since that time, including limited-stop service, transit signal priority on several routes, and a handful of queue jumps to give buses a head-start at intersections.

Unfortunately, full implementation of existing plans, especially for bus lanes, has been slow to non-existent, and DC and Metro have lagged behind other cities. Peer cities around the country have added miles of dedicated bus lanes over the last decade, but DC currently has only two miles of them, 1.4 miles of which are the temporary pilot rush hour bus lanes on H and I streets downtown which launched in June 2019. These downtown bus lanes serve 70 buses per hour during peak hours, on lines with 80,000 riders a day.

The H and I streets pilot of bus lanes could be the harbinger of a new era of better bus service. The District of Columbia Department of Transportation (DDOT) plans to implement rush hour bus lanes on 16th Street in 2020, along with ongoing current improvements to service and bus stops in the corridor. The K Street Transitway is scheduled to start construction in 2022.

DDOT also recently established a new Bus Priority Program to implement bus service improvements. It builds on numerous plans, including the District’s Long-Range Transportation Plan, moveDC. Adopted in 2014, moveDC proposed a network of 25 miles of dedicated surface transit lanes across the city. DDOT recently revealed plans to update moveDC for 2020.

Metro is also setting its sights on improving bus service. This year, Metro convened a collaborative regional effort, known as the Bus Transformation Project, aimed at transforming the bus system for the entire Washington region. The draft recommendations from this include coordination with local governments to give priority to buses on local roads, all-door boarding, faster fare payment methods like mobile payment, free transfers between bus and rail, and discounted fare products for low-income riders (who make up a majority of Metrobus riders).

The District and Metro appear poised to make the political commitment to implement these kinds of improvements that could bring up bus service to an “A” performance. But decision-makers will need to hear from transit supporters if DC’s bus service is going to make the grade.

Here’s one of the changes proposed by DC Mayor Muriel Bowser in her budget to fix dangerous streets: Transfer photo enforcement from the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) to the District Department of Transportation (DDOT). In the wake of so many tragic deaths on our streets, the mayor’s proposed transfer of photo enforcement to DDOT is one of a number of actions she can take to make our streets safer. Whether the DC Council will support this transfer will be determined in the next two weeks in the final budget deliberations and vote.

Traffic cameras can be an effective approach for discouraging dangerous behavior by drivers. By placing oversight of this tool with the agency responsible for managing our streets, automated traffic enforcement could more effectively improve safety. Traffic cameras are helping now, but they could be used much more strategically if DDOT is able to integrate them into its safety programs.

While there’s good precedent for Departments of Transportation administering automated traffic enforcement—New York City and Chicago are examples—DC Council Transportation and Environment Committee (T&E) chair Mary Cheh (Ward 3) is skeptical, and wants to keep photo enforcement where it is, with the police. We at the Coalition for Smarter Growth along with our partners think this would mean a missed opportunity to make our streets safer.

The city’s high number of traffic deaths this year point to the shortcomings to date in DDOT's efforts to build safe roads, and better utilization of traffic cameras is no substitute for the essential work of street redesign. But bringing the powerful tool of automated traffic enforcement into DDOT’s toolkit is a part of the solution.

In addition to the opportunity to better integrate photo enforcement with DDOT's other safety tools, the agency is also planning to deploy traffic cameras to enforce bus lane compliance. While DC lags far behind other cities in deployment of dedicated bus lanes, starting this year, the District will establish dedicated bus lanes on H and I Streets downtown as a summer pilot. We also hope to finally see the 16th Street bus lanes, and later the implementation of the K Street redesign with dedicated bus lanes.

But bus lanes need to be enforced, and DC’s record of enforcement hasn’t been great (e.g. 7th and 9th Streets downtown). Given everything on MPD’s plate, getting sufficient attention from MPD to deploy and fine-tune new automated traffic enforcement for bus lanes seems challenging at best. On the other hand, DDOT has a direct interest in using photo enforcement to ensure that bus lanes are successful, move more people, and improve accessibility in the city.

Critics of photo enforcement have often charged that cameras are more about revenue generation than preventing dangerous behavior. Vesting DDOT with the responsibility for using traffic cameras as part of their management of roadway safety gives us an opportunity to ask for greater accountability. With the transfer of traffic cameras sought by the Mayor, the DC Council can insist that DDOT use its data collection and photo enforcement results to act more quickly to fix streets and intersections that show risks outside the norm.

Cheh wants the MPD to continue to administer automated traffic enforcement, and is not accepting the Mayor’s budget provision transferring automated enforcement to DDOT and under her committee’s oversight. Allen, who chairs the Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary, supports the transfer to DDOT and does not want to accept the funds back into MPD’s budget. This conflict between committees will need to be resolved by council chairman Phil Mendelson.

We hope Mendelson will support placing traffic cameras with DDOT so it can incorporate them in the coordinated approach known as the four E's of street safety: engineering, enforcement, education, and evaluation. Under DDOT, there will be a better focus on safety to protect people who walk, bike, drive, and use transit in our city, and better enforcement of dedicated bus lanes to speed up buses, improve on-time reliability, and bring back riders.

Increasingly, DC's workforce is comprised of either high-income or low-income jobs, with few middle-income jobs available. Among DC’s most common occupations, 40% are low wage jobs that do not pay enough to cover the city’s high housing prices.

The most common occupation in the District of Columbia is, unsurprisingly, lawyer. This is also the most well-paid occupation in the District, where attorneys average about $161,900 per year. The least well-paid of the 20 most common occupations are waiters and waitresses, who earn just under $25,000 annually, on average.

To evaluate what housing is needed for the city’s workforce, we identified DC’s most common occupations and median annual earnings, then matched those results to housing cost burdens. Eight of the most common 20 occupations pay less than $48,000 a year. Five of the top 20 jobs pay at or below $29,000 per year, which is considered extremely low income for a two-person household. Strikingly, not a single one of the most common 20 occupations in the District was between 50 and 80% of area median income.

Many of the fastest growing service jobs in the District – home health aides, food preparation, and waiters/waitresses – earn extremely low incomes. At these income levels, working households face severe housing cost burdens, paying more than half of their income to housing (see figure below).

DC households with severe housing cost burden (paying more than half of household income for housing). Source: National Low Income Housing Coalition, "The Gap," March 2018.

Few households earning above 80% area median income face severe housing cost burdens where they are paying more than half of their income to housing. In contrast, a large share of households below 50% of area median income, and the great majority of those at the 30% of area median income level pay most of their income toward their housing costs.

These data show that the District’s greatest workforce housing need is not for those earning 80% of area median income and above. Rather, the housing most needed in the city for workers is for those who earn below 50% of area median income.

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser began her new term as mayor committing to building 36,000 more housing units by 2025 to ease the region’s projected shortfall of 100,000 homes for its growing economy. On Monday night, she announced a new $20 million Workforce Housing Fund to leverage private sector investment of nearly $200 million, “to create and preserve housing for teachers, police officers, firefighters, janitors, social workers, and everyone else who has a good job but also needs to be able to find an affordable home.”

Increasing the supply of workforce housing is a worthy goal. Helping workers live near their work offers broad benefits by shortening commutes, reducing traffic, pollution, crashes, and wasted time. It also helps foster a more resilient, growing economy.

As the District considers income targeting for its housing assistance programs, the data suggest that subsidy dollars for “workforce housing” should be targeted below 50% area median income, rather than at 80% or above. Without this assistance, it will be difficult to create and retain housing for the District’s workers who are increasingly saddled with severe cost burdens.

It's problematic to think that supply and demand don't apply to housing. But on the other end of the spectrum, a free-market approach isn’t the whole answer to housing affordability, either.

Some people (on the left) oppose new market-rate housing development. They claim that new development only provides high-end housing, which doesn’t do anything to help the supply of more affordable options.

Others with a more libertarian view (a more right-leaning view in our region) claim that if we get rid of all zoning regulations, the free market will take care of it and build housing for everyone.

Both arguments are wrong.

Yes, adding more housing must absolutely be a part of the strategy to make housing more affordable. And zoning changes to allow people to build taller and more usable space near transit, rent out carriage houses, and avoid expensive and often-unnecessary parking are all steps in the right direction. But some proponents go on to say relaxing zoning will solve the problem all on its own. It won’t.

The free market will only build housing for higher incomes

Even if cities roll back many land use regulations, squeeze down construction costs, and leverage new financing tools, the cost of building new housing won’t fall below a certain point.

This report from McKinsey found that even if you take all of these steps together, it will only cut the gap between what housing costs and what people can afford to pay in half (assuming people spend 30% of their income on housing — a generally-recommended level).

A developer finances a new development by offering investors a return. If the return is higher than investing in something else, investors will finance the project. If the return is not high enough, especially given the risk, investors will put their money elsewhere and the housing simply doesn’t get built. Regulations add to development costs. The development review process also adds costs when projects get delayed or shrunk down, and it increases the risk.

The city’s baseline costs for a newly-constructed one-bedroom apartment in DC are over $2,000 a month to meet the level of return the market demands.

A person’s income has to be about $38 per hour, or $80,000, for this kind of rent to only take up 30%. If someone earns $15 an hour, or $32,000 a year, he or she can only afford an $800 apartment— or less than half of this level.

More density does not change the basic math

Even if land is free (which it’s not) and regulations offer unlimited density, buildings still cost money to build. And taller buildings cost more money per unit than short ones.

In the DC Office of Planning’s study on DC building heights, Anita Morrison, a principal with Partners for Economic Solutions, found that while regulations might reduce potential development, unlimited height and density is not the simple solution to affordability.

“Unlimited FAR [density measure Floor Area Ratio] is not the magic cure, because the cost of building with concrete and steel is much more per square foot than low-rise stick-built [wood frame] construction up to five or six stories,” Morrison explained.

To prove this point, Morrison offered an analysis of varying scenarios for a new apartment building. Assume a new building on a half-acre lot where the land price is set at zero (such as a deal to build on public land). Rent would be $1,127 for a one bedroom apartment, which is affordable to households making 60% of AMI ($51,600 per year). Is this building economical to build?

To find out, Morrison tested different heights ranging from 65 feet (six stories) to 250 feet (23 stories). The rent didn’t cover the cost of construction or meet the minimum return on investment in any of these cases.

The 65-foot building costs $168,000 per unit, while the costs for high-rise steel and concrete buildings of 130 to 250 feet are higher. The 200-foot building costs $241,000 per unit. Even if the building’s parking is above-ground (cheaper) rather than below-ground, the return only improves to 4.6 percent, “still nowhere close” the 7 percent required return on investment, according to Morrison.

Of course, most development projects include paying for land. The higher the zoning, the more valuable the land, so some of the gain also turns into higher land costs rather than lower housing costs.

What about “filtering”?

In response, free market advocates claim that “filtering” helps supply housing at rents below new construction. Instead of living in new buildings, poorer people can live in unrenovated older ones.

Like the argument about new market-rate housing, this is true, but only to a degree. It is true that increasing supply eases upward pressure on all prices. But the reservoir of naturally cheaper, older buildings runs out after a while.

When many people moved out of urban areas, a lot of buildings started decaying and so prices went down. Now that urban areas are popular again, in growing cities like DC, older buildings are a dwindling resource. New buildings won’t get old fast enough, and they won’t offer cheap-but-only-adequate places to live, to actually offer housing for the lower end of the income spectrum.

Old buildings need renovation. Even if they’re low-income housing, they still need repairs and rehabilitation—they may not need granite countertops, but the plumbing has to work well. Once a market-rate building in a growing neighborhood needs renovation, there’s enormous incentive just to go further and make the building higher-end to capture the higher rents or sell it as more expensive condos.

Take the 1400 block of W Street NW, just north of the booming epicenter of 14th & U Streets. Six nearly-identical apartment buildings line the southern side of the street. In 2000, all started out as unsubsidized market-rate, affordable rental apartment buildings, except 1424 W Street. The one exception was converted to a limited equity mixed-income cooperative in the early 1990s by the tenants. Today, two of the buildings are high-end market rate, while four are part of two affordable cooperatives.

During the early 2000s, all of these buildings changed hands and filtered up to a higher rent market. The three westernmost buildings, totaling 100 units, formed an affordable cooperative with financial help from the District government through the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA), which lets a tenant group match a buyer’s offer. The buildings were renovated for $11 million, and many of the existing tenants were able to become owners.

Without direct intervention via TOPA the program and funding from the city, all of these old apartment buildings would be high-priced market rate housing today — despite the hundreds of new units being constructed on vacant lots adjacent to this block.

While there were some regulatory limits on construction, there was a lot of vacant land nearby at the time. Supply was not constrained by zoning, but rather by financing and property owners’ readiness to build. It’s hard to speculate that any amount of nearby new construction would have prevented these buildings from being renovated into high-end housing.

On a larger scale, the increased supply of housing in the area helps absorb demand for more housing, but it’s not enough to stem the demand for such a sought-after location. Between 2005 and 2011, the rental housing market’s growth added more than 12,500 units. But at the same time, $800/month apartments fell by half, while $1000/month rentals nearly doubled. Strong market demand will shrink the availability of low-priced units. That’s what has happened over the last decade as DC transformed from a declining city into a rapidly growing one.

Supply matters, but it’s not the whole story

Building more housing is important. But simply relaxing constraints on density and height isn’t enough to build and sustain a housing stock that’s affordable to the working class, which makes up a large share of our overall population and workforce.

We should roll back some of the regulatory delay and restrictions that do a lot more harm than good. We can reduce parking requirements, allow accessory apartments, increase height limits in a few parts of town, and fight for projects that will add housing, especially near existing transit.

At the same time, the District needs to find ways to create new affordable housing for people of making under 50-80% of AMI (a household of two earning up to $70,000) and preserve the affordable housing that already exists. The market will not meet those needs on its own.

]]>Thu, 04 May 2017 17:30:00 +0000Cheryl Cort (Contributor)Why the left is wrong about affordable housinghttps://ggwash.org/view/63302/why-left-is-wrong-about-affordable-housing
https://ggwash.org/view/63302/why-left-is-wrong-about-affordable-housing

Whenever we discuss housing affordability, we usually hear two major opposing beliefs. Both are well-honed, clear arguments. And both are wrong — or at least, not completely right.

Some say that new development only provides high-end housing which doesn’t do anything to help those who really need it. Therefore, they oppose new market-rate development.

Others say the problem is we don’t have enough development. Regulations constrict supply and drive up costs. Get rid of regulations and the free market will build housing for everyone.

While residents of DC (and most US cities) are mostly Democrats, we can say that proponents of the first view are generally further to the left on the political spectrum, while proponents of the second are, if not conservative, further to the right.

This post will address what’s wrong with the left’s notion that supply and demand don’t apply. A follow-up post will critique the right’s free-market solution.

In a nutshell, the first proposition essentially denies that supply and demand matter. But it’s not to hard to demonstrate that if there’s not enough housing on the market to meet demand, higher-income people will bid up prices and out-compete lower-income people.

DC is growing rapidly and this strong demand to live in the city encourages people to build new housing. But it’s not enough. There’s so much competition for a limited supply of homes that even people who could normally afford to rent or buy a home can’t find one easily within their budget.

There’s clear evidence that this is happening in a 2014 study by the Urban Institute about affordable housing in the region. It shows that nearly half of the units that could be affordable to lower-income people are instead occupied by higher-income people:

Graph based on DC data from the Urban Institute. Image by the author.

Basically, the people who make up the green bars in the above chart could afford to be in a higher-priced unit. If there were more new construction units, many of them would live there. That would leave more lower-priced housing left for those who don’t earn as much.

Encouraging more new housing to be built and making it easier to build can help increase competition among builders and reduce competition among renters. This helps keep prices down both in among new, higher priced units and also in older buildings.

Recent reports suggest this is happening. The rapid increase in housing supply that has been pushing down rents in high end, newer units is also now shaving down prices across the market, even for older apartments.

While this decrease in prices might be difficult to discern, continuing to encourage more supply will help further push down costs and make it easier for a larger segment of households to find the right place to live.

Supply matters. The more the market can serve those who can to pay for more expensive housing, the better chance for moderate- and lower-income people to find lower-priced housing available.

Buildings are expensive to build, and absent a government subsidy or a program like Inclusionary Zoning, new units won’t be affordable to everyone. But it can be for many. Ignoring the importance of supply to keep up with demand means that we are only that much farther behind trying to address our housing needs for people at the bottom and middle of the housing market.

Encouraging supply to meet demand is a necessary condition for addressing housing affordability. However, it’s not a sufficient condition entirely on its own. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about why “let the market work” isn’t the whole answer either.

A coalition of affordable housing advocates, faith groups, business groups, tenants' groups, developers, and over 250 residents have unified to support more housing, more affordable housing, and targeted support for communities as DC rewrites its Comprehensive Plan. One of those priorities: Best utilize areas near transit.

The coalition, which includes Greater Greater Washington and many other groups, has agreed on a statement of ten priorities. In a series of posts, coalition members will go through many of the priorities to explain what they mean, why there's a problem, and how the group reached agreement. Do you support the priorities? Sign on today!

What “Best utilize areas near transit” means

The coalition says:

Best utilize areas near transit.​ When redevelopment occurs on blocks surrounding Metrorail stations and priority transit corridors, the District should, through the Comprehensive Plan, permit and encourage mixed-use developments of medium to high density. To the extent feasible, redevelopments involving increased zoning should include affordable housing in excess of what is required by inclusionary zoning.

Put plainly, building housing near Metro stations, bus lines, and streetcar service makes it easier for people to live in the District without owning a car. And that means less congestion and pollution as well as a stronger local economy.

As the District of Columbia continues to grow to historic population levels, our transit corridors and stations offer the best opportunities for creating places to live and work that are more sustainable, accessible, and affordable. Helping more people live close to transit, enabling more jobs near transit, and creating attractive places near transit are all essential to well-managed growth.

The consequences of not creating these opportunities near transit is spread out, sprawling development.

Pushing growth away from cities, towns, and transit lines means converting more farms into subdivisions and strip malls. This generates ever more polluted stormwater runoff and carves up working agricultural lands.

Sprawl also makes it impractical to get around by walking, biking, or transit, forcing everyone to get around by car, which fuels traffic congestion and air pollution. The cycle then continues, as the congestion leads to bigger roads that simply get congested again, all of which are built with money that gets diverted from transit and existing infrastructure.

Finally, when we sprawl out, low-income people disproportionately feel the negative effects of having no option but to drive.

We've missed chances to build near transit in the past

Unfortunately, there are plenty of examples of lost opportunities to provide more mixed income housing options at Metro stations in D.C. While some parts of the District have been growing, others— particularly more affluent ones— have not.

The reason for the lack of new homes is not due to lack of interest. Rather, local opposition that takes advantage of a weak and nebulous Comp Plan make it difficult to build new housing in neighborhoods where some existing residents are determined to stop it. That leads to exclusive enclaves with limited housing opportunities for residents of different incomes.

Under our current Comp Plan language, here are a few examples of what we’ve lost:

Abandoned: The single use, two story library constructed by the Tenleytown Metro station was supposed to be a mixed use building with affordable and market rate housing above the library. While the city spent extra money to strengthen the foundation to allow some apartments to be built above the library in the future, the prospects for many affordable units is dim.

All these proposed projects offered below market rate and market-rate homes. They are all examples of the market responding to strong demand to live in the city close to transit by redeveloping sites close to transit. They are also examples of how determined opponents can use contradictory language in the Comp Plan to stall, stop, and shrink the construction of much needed new homes and affordable homes.

Under the current Future Land Use Map (FLUM), which translates the Comp Plan onto a map, no Metro stations are designated for low density residential development. A reasonable update to these designations could be to take land that the FLUM categorizes as “moderate” density (row houses and low rise garden apartments) and make it “medium” (4-7 stories), and to change what the FLUM categorizes as “medium” to be “high” (8 stories or more).

Based on the experience of the last decade, it’s fair to say that the Comp Plan has not been as effective as it should have been in balancing the need for more housing, and more affordable housing, around transit stations. That’s especially true in affluent neighborhoods.

Looking into the future, it’s critical that the Comp Plan clarify that a good share of our city’s needed future homes should go to places well-served by transit. Rather than losing out to some neighbors’ objections about new homes, we need to address local concerns while committing to creating more housing opportunities that help more people live more sustainably, and help the city thrive.

Sign on to the priorities!

This is one of ten priorities where the coalition reached agreement. We'll be following up with articles on more of the 10 priorities by a variety of coalition members.

(Note: While the coalition agreed on the priorities, this article is my commentary about one of the priorities, not an official coalition statement, and all members have not signed onto the specific wording here. The same goes for the other posts in this series.)

So far, 65 organizations and over 350 individuals have put their names on the priorities statement. Will you join them?

This year’s DC budget includes the most funding ever for affordable housing programs: $222 million. Here’s how the money will be spent:

Nearly half of the funds, $100 million, will go into the Housing Production Trust Fund (HPTF). This will pay to renovate or create 1,000 homes for low income households. Next year’s funding is roughly double this year’s level and is one of the highest in the trust fund’s history.

The HPTF creates affordable housing through grants and loans to nonprofit and mission-driven for-profit housing developers, as well as to renters exercising their Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) rights. Housing developers and/or TOPA renters are able to use HPTF assistance to leverage additional private financing. As a result, every dollar from the trust fund results in $4-$5 of new housing development.

The HPTF targets very low and extremely low income households, who face by far the greatest need for affordable housing. Rental housing created by the HPTF must be affordable for at least 40 years, and homeownership units (which are purchased rather than rented) have to be affordable for at least 5-15 years, depending on various factors.

Since 2002, the HPTF has produced and preserved over 8,500 affordable units across the city, with 2,300 more units in the pipeline. An estimated 18,000 DC residents currently live in units funded by the Trust Fund.

Rental Assistance

The budget also includes $7 million to expand rental assistance to 500 more households through DC’s Local Rent Supplement Program (LRSP). LSRP provides vouchers that cover the difference between the cost of rent and what the household can afford to pay (30 percent of income). This support can mean the difference between homelessness or couch surfing with friends and relatives, and having an adequate home to return to at the end of each (low paid) workday.

The budget also creates a new rental assistance program, called Targeted Assisted Housing, to help 500 formerly homeless families and individuals.

Altogether, DC’s locally funded rental assistance will expand by 20 percent next year and serve 1,000 more households.

Permanent Supportive Housing

Another important commitment is to boost funding to end to chronic homelessness. The budget provides $34 million and expands Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) to 365 more individuals and 110 families. It fully funds the first-year recommendations of a new strategic plan developed this year by the city’s Interagency Council on Homelessness.

PSH is for people who need long-term housing assistance with supportive services in order to stay housed. This national best practice offers affordable housing with case management services to chronically homeless individuals and families. Providing housing to chronically homeless residents allows them to focus on other challenges they face, such as mental illness, and has been shown to save money by reducing use of costly emergency services.

PSH does more than provide a home: it offers expert on-site case management services, such as life skills and job training, counseling for drug and alcohol abuse, and special services for people who are elderly, mentally disabled, or HIV positive. Chronically homeless (homeless for a year or for periods over the previous three years) individuals and families with a disabling condition are eligible for PSH, and can apply at any District shelter or homeless service provider.

As of 2009, there were 2,320 units of PSH in DC, providing 2,724 beds for individuals and 1,166 beds for families with children.

This is real money for affordable housing

This budget is somewhat of a landmark for the city, with the Mayor and Council demonstrating in real dollars a commitment to addressing the city’s growing housing affordability crisis. A recent post explains how rising demand, rising prices, shrinking supply of low-priced units, and stagnant earnings are making DC roughly half as affordable as it was 10 years ago.

It’s a big problem that requires a lot more effort. But Mayor Bowser and the DC Council deserve credit for this major step on one of the city’s most serious challenges.

]]>Mon, 08 Jun 2015 16:15:00 +0000Cheryl Cort (Contributor)Prince George’s is getting a major new medical center. Will it make it easier to walk around?https://ggwash.org/view/38327/prince-georges-is-getting-a-major-new-medical-center-will-it-make-it-easier-to-walk-around
https://ggwash.org/view/38327/prince-georges-is-getting-a-major-new-medical-center-will-it-make-it-easier-to-walk-around

Preliminary site plans for an upcoming regional medical center at Largo Town Center Metro station could do more to encourage people to walk around the new complex. Missing key elements of a more pedestrian-friendly design could suppress the site’s potential as a new walkable downtown and for Prince George’s County.

A mockup of the new medical center. Rendering from Dimensions Healthcare Systems.

Prince George’s leaders and residents have high hopes for the new $655 million, 231-bed regional medical center, which continues through its approval process at the Prince George’s Planning Board later this month. Officials have called the complex a game changer for Prince George’s because it could spark a walkable new downtown for the county at the Largo Town Center Metro station.

With a projected 2,000 workers coming to the site daily, a well-designed new hospital could spur economic development around the Largo Town Center Metro station and create a new walkable downtown area and economic engine for Prince George’s.

But preliminary site plan drawings show a wide, high speed road separating the hospital from a redeveloped Boulevard at Capital Centre. The overdesigned road creates a barrier to an inviting, mixed-use, walkable environment.

Image by the author.

A more appropriate street design for transit-oriented development would offer a moderately scaled street that knits the area together. This new road, along with all the new streets, could be designed to allow not only vehicle access, but also help people to walk comfortably, and cross the street to patronize nearby businesses, or walk to and from Metro.

If the hospital is an isolated enclave, it will do little to catalyze economic development in the area and miss the opportunity to use the site’s great transit access and mixed use environment.

On Wednesday, we discussed what’s wrong with the notion that supply and demand don’t apply to housing. But on the other end of the spectrum, a free-market approach isn’t the whole answer to housing affordability, either.

Some people (on the left) oppose new market-rate housing development. They claim that new development only provides high-end housing, which doesn’t do anything to help the supply of more affordable options.

Others with a more libertarian view (a more right-leaning view in our region) claim that if we get rid of all zoning regulations, the free market will take care of it and build housing for everyone.

Both arguments are wrong.

Yes, adding more housing must absolutely be a part of the strategy to make housing more affordable. And zoning changes to allow people to build taller and more usable space near transit, rent out carriage houses, and avoid expensive and often-unnecessary parking are all steps in the right direction. But some proponents go on to say relaxing zoning will solve the problem all on its own. It won’t.

The free market will only build housing for higher incomes

Even if cities roll back many land use regulations, squeeze down construction costs, and leverage new financing tools, the cost of building new housing won’t fall below a certain point.

Graph from McKinsey.

This report from McKinsey found that even if you take all of these steps together, it will only cut the gap between what housing costs and what people can afford to pay in half (assuming people spend 30% of their income on housing — a generally-recommended level).

A developer finances a new development by offering investors a return. If the return is higher than investing in something else, investors will finance the project. If the return is not high enough, especially given the risk, investors will put their money elsewhere and the housing simply doesn’t get built. Regulations add to development costs. The development review process also adds costs when projects get delayed or shrunk down, and it increases the risk.

The city’s baseline costs for But even without these costs a newly-constructed one-bedroom apartment in DC are over $2,000 a month to meet the level of return the market demands.

A person’s income has to be about $38 per hour, or $80,000, for this kind of rent to only take up 30%. If someone earns $15 an hour, or $32,000 a year, he or she can only afford an $800 apartment— or less than half of this level.

More density does not change the basic math

Even if land is free (which it’s not) and regulations offer unlimited density, buildings still cost money to build. And taller buildings cost more money per unit than short ones.

In the DC Office of Planning’s study on DC building heights, Anita Morrison, a principal with Partners for Economic Solutions, found that while regulations might reduce potential development, unlimited height and density is not the simple solution to affordability.

“Unlimited FAR [density measure Floor Area Ratio] is not the magic cure, because the cost of building with concrete and steel is much more per square foot than low-rise stick-built [wood frame] construction up to five or six stories,” Morrison explained.

To prove this point, Morrison offered an analysis of varying scenarios for a new apartment building. Assume a new building on a half-acre lot where the land price is set at zero (such as a deal to build on public land). Rent would be $1,127 for a one bedroom apartment, which is affordable to households making 60% of AMI ($51,600 per year). Is this building economical to build?

To find out, Morrison tested different heights ranging from 65 feet (six stories) to 250 feet (23 stories). The rent didn’t cover the cost of construction or meet the minimum return on investment in any of these cases.

The 65-foot building costs $168,000 per unit, while the costs for high-rise steel and concrete buildings of 130 to 250 feet are higher. The 200-foot building costs $241,000 per unit. Even if the building’s parking is above-ground (cheaper) rather than below-ground, the return only improves to 4.6 percent, “still nowhere close” the 7 percent required return on investment, according to Morrison.

Of course, most development projects include paying for land. The higher the zoning, the more valuable the land, so some of the gain also turns into higher land costs rather than lower housing costs.

What about “filtering”?

In response, free market advocates claim that “filtering” helps supply housing at rents below new construction. Instead of living in new buildings, poorer people can live in unrenovated older ones.

Like the argument about new market-rate housing, this is true, but only to a degree. It is true that increasing supply eases upward pressure on all prices. But the reservoir of naturally cheaper, older buildings runs out after a while.

When many people moved out of urban areas, a lot of buildings started decaying and so prices went down. Now that urban areas are popular again, in growing cities like DC, older buildings are a dwindling resource. New buildings won’t get old fast enough, and they won’t offer cheap-but-only-adequate places to live, to actually offer housing for the lower end of the income spectrum.

Old buildings need renovation. Even if they’re low-income housing, they still need repairs and rehabilitation—they may not need granite countertops, but the plumbing has to work well. Once a market-rate building in a growing neighborhood needs renovation, there’s enormous incentive just to go further and make the building higher-end to capture the higher rents or sell it as more expensive condos.

Take the 1400 block of W Street NW, just north of the booming epicenter of 14th & U Streets. Six nearly-identical apartment buildings line the southern side of the street. In 2000, all started out as unsubsidized market-rate, affordable rental apartment buildings, except 1424 W Street. The one exception was converted to a limited equity mixed-income cooperative in the early 1990s by the tenants. Today, two of the buildings are high-end market rate, while four are part of two affordable cooperatives.

Image from Bing.

During the early 2000s, all of these buildings changed hands and filtered up to a higher rent market. The three westernmost buildings, totaling 100 units, formed an affordable cooperative with financial help from the District government through the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA), which lets a tenant group match a buyer’s offer. The buildings were renovated for $11 million, and many of the existing tenants were able to become owners.

Without direct intervention via TOPA the program and funding from the city, all of these old apartment buildings would be high-priced market rate housing today — despite the hundreds of new units being constructed on vacant lots adjacent to this block.

While there were some regulatory limits on construction, there was a lot of vacant land nearby at the time. Supply was not constrained by zoning, but rather by financing and property owners’ readiness to build. It’s hard to speculate that any amount of nearby new construction would have prevented these buildings from being renovated into high-end housing.

On a larger scale, the increased supply of housing in the area helps absorb demand for more housing, but it’s not enough to stem the demand for such a sought-after location. Between 2005 and 2011, the rental housing market’s growth added more than 12,500 units. But at the same time, $800/month apartments fell by half, while $1000/month rentals nearly doubled. Strong market demand will shrink the availability of low-priced units. That’s what has happened over the last decade as DC transformed from a declining city into a rapidly growing one.

Supply matters, but it’s not the whole story

Building more housing is important. But simply relaxing constraints on density and height isn’t enough to build and sustain a housing stock that’s affordable to the working class, which makes up a large share of our overall population and workforce.

We should roll back some of the regulatory delay and restrictions that do a lot more harm than good. We can reduce parking requirements, allow accessory apartments, increase height limits in a few parts of town, and fight for projects that will add housing, especially near existing transit.

At the same time, the District needs to find ways to create new affordable housing for people of making under 50-80% of AMI (a household of two earning up to $70,000) and preserve the affordable housing that already exists. The market will not meet those needs on its own.

Whenever we discuss housing affordability, we usually hear two major opposing beliefs. Both are well-honed, clear arguments. And both are wrong — or at least, not completely right.

Some say that new development only provides high-end housing which doesn’t do anything to help those who really need it. Therefore, they oppose new market-rate development.

Others say the problem is we don’t have enough development. Regulations constrict supply and drive up costs. Get rid of regulations and the free market will build housing for everyone.

While residents of DC (and most US cities) are mostly Democrats, we can say that proponents of the first view are generally farther to the left on the political spectrum, while proponents of the second are, if not conservative, farther to the right. This post will address what’s wrong with the left’s notion that supply and demand don’t apply. A follow-up post will critique the right’s free-market solution.

In a nutshell, the first proposition essentially denies that supply and demand matter. But it’s not to hard to demonstrate that if there’s not enough housing on the market to meet demand, higher-income people will bid up prices and out-compete lower-income people.

DC is growing rapidly and this strong demand to live in the city encourages people to build new housing. But it’s not enough. There’s so much competition for a limited supply of homes that even people who could normally afford to rent or buy a home can’t find one easily within their budget.

There’s clear evidence that this is happening in a recent study by the Urban Institute about affordable housing in the region. It shows that nearly half of the units that could be affordable to lower-income people are instead occupied by higher-income people:

Graph based on data for DC from the Urban Institute.

Basically, the people who make up the green bars in the above chart could afford to be in a higher-priced unit. If there were more new construction units, many of them would live there. That would leave more lower-priced housing left for those who don’t earn as much.

Encouraging more new housing to be built and making it easier to build can help increase competition among builders and reduce competition among renters. This helps keep prices down both in among new, higher priced units and also in older buildings.

Recent reports suggest this is happening. The rapid increase in housing supply that has been pushing down rents in high end, newer units is also now shaving down prices across the market, even for older apartments.

While this decrease in prices might be difficult to discern, continuing to encourage more supply will help further push down costs and make it easier for a larger segment of households to find the right place to live.

Supply matters. The more the market can serve those who can to pay for more expensive housing, the better chance for moderate- and lower-income people to find lower-priced housing available.

Buildings are expensive to build, and absent a government subsidy or a program like Inclusionary Zoning, new units won’t be affordable to everyone. But it can be for many. Ignoring the importance of supply to keep up with demand means that we are only that much farther behind trying to address our housing needs for people at the bottom and middle of the housing market.

Encouraging supply to meet demand is a necessary condition for addressing housing affordability. However, it’s not a sufficient condition entirely on its own. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about why “let the market work” isn’t the whole answer either.

One hundred twenty-three new units of housing could come to Shaw’s historic Blagden Alley. Many residents think that’s a great idea, but some aren’t happy that the project would contain no parking spaces. That idea deserves support, not opposition.

Rendering of the proposed development.

The misconception that everybody drives and needs a place to park has long shaped cities’ zoning codes. But developers are starting to look beyond that assumption and consider buildings that cater to people who want to travel in other ways.

The two small buildings, by developer SB-Urban, would run along Blagden Alley between M and N Streets NW in Shaw, adjacent to the Convention Center and Mount Vernon Square Metro station and close to downtown. Blagden Alley is a unique historic alley for DC, featuring both residences and small businesses including La Colombe Coffee. This alley, and its northern neighbor Naylor Court, are small alley networks that allow for vehicles and pedestrians to share space in a way that is common in European cities.

The new buildings will have no parking

SB-Urban would build two apartment buildings with 123 small, short-term, fully-furnished rental studios averaging 380 square feet. It replaces two vacant lots used for surface parking and restores a historic garage on the interior of the alley. And it would contain no off-street parking. It’s similar to projects in Dupont Circle and Georgetown which have already gotten through the approval process.

Units without parking won’t be for everyone, but would appeal to the many people who don’t need cars to work, shop, or socialize. It’s near downtown and near ample transit.

SB-Urban has described the complex as a good fit for an individual who arrives by taxi or Metro with little more than a suitcase. This person prefers to live in a vibrant urban neighborhood and navigate the city by foot, bike, bus and train. An ideal tenant, for example, might be a consultant in town to work for nine months.

Any new housing development in Shaw is likely to succeed. But to make sure the residents can live without parking spaces, SB-Urban will invest $70,000 in a new 27-dock Capital Bikeshare station (and 14 new bikes) and each resident will get a membership. The building will provide car share memberships, real-time transit screens, and a bike maintenance room. There will also be someone on site to advise residents on how to get around without a car.

Rendering of the proposed development.

No parking draws opposition

Despite support from Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2F, DC’s Board of Zoning Adjustment has yet to approve SB-Urban’s proposal. Board members worried that despite all efforts to ensure apartment residents will be comfortable without a car, the project will still lead to more cars on the street and a raised demand for parking in a neighborhood where drivers already complain of tight parking.

At a December 2, 2014 hearing, several nearby residents objected to the project’s lack of parking. Board of Zoning Adjustment Chairman Lloyd Jordan repeatedly expressed skepticism that building zero of the 62 spaces otherwise required by zoning would not have a negative impact on the neighborhood, despite repeated affirmation by both DC Office of Planning and DC Department of Transportation officials.

“What do we do two years from now when the buildings are up and running and we have a problem?” Jordan asked. He did not specify what he meant by a parking problem. And his and other residents’ concerns are misplaced.

This project is smart because there’s demand for it

Parking is often far more expensive than most people realize. Fewer people all over the region and country are owning cars. More than a third of households in DC are car-free, and that number is 41% among renters in the Census tract containing the project.

This neighborhood has an astonishingly high walk to work rate: 37%, versus DC’s overall 11%, which is already the second highest in the country. This makes sense because of the proximity to downtown.

The Blagden Alley project is not appealing to just a small niche, but rather to a large and growing share of DC’s households: young professionals who are much less likely to own a car and more likely to want to walk and bike to daily activities.

The rapid growth of DC, with more than 42,000 people arriving between 2010 and 2013, is led by young adults who are willing to trade larger living spaces and car ownership for living in more walkable, mixed use neighborhoods.

Without the ability to get an RPP sticker, if any residents later decide they do want cars, they will have to rent an existing off-street parking space nearby. Even so, opponents of the development argue that new residents would find a way to get a sticker or at least a temporary permit from the police. SB-Urban representatives stated that the leases in the building would prohibit this.

Blagden Alley apartments will add affordable housing and pedestrians

Shaw is a neighborhood that’s in high demand in a rapidly growing city. In addition to adding much-needed housing, the Blagden Alley project is setting aside 11 units for moderate and low-income residents as part of the city’s Inclusionary Zoning affordable housing program.

By bringing in new residents who walk to stores, work, and transit, the project will also push its historic neighborhood toward being more pedestrian-oriented. More people walking on the streets help lower crime, support local businesses, and strengthen the case for better transit.

Construction of these buildings with alley addresses and no parking also reinforces the pedestrian orientation of the alleys, which do not have sidewalks. Forcing more cars into the alley would degrade the character of this shared-use space.

SB-Urban also makes the case that this kind of housing minimizes vehicle trips, lessens traffic, and shrinks the carbon footprint of residents. “Buildings with parking attract people with cars; buildings without parking attract people without cars,” said project manager Brook Katzen in a statement about the project.

Today, the BZA will continue to discuss the case. These Blagden Alley apartments represent an excellent chance to welcome new residents to the city with minimal carbon footprints.

The DC Zoning Commission has been deliberating on the zoning update this week. The commissioners embraced most of the DC Office of Planning’s proposals while even rejecting at least one of OP’s recent steps backward.

Buildings near transit (including priority bus corridors) will be able to have half the parking that’s otherwise required if they are willing to forego residential parking permits. Homeowners will be able to put accessory apartments inside their houses without a special hearing, but will have to go through one to use a carriage house. And corner grocery stores will be able to open in residential row house areas if they sell fresh food.

This is a major milestone in the grueling zoning regulations revision process that began in 2007 just after the DC Council adopted the 2006 Comprehensive Plan. Opponents of the update repeatedly asked the commission and the Office of Planning and for more outreach, more meetings, and more delay. In response, officials stretched out the process and added dozens of meetings, fact sheets, and hearings throughout the city. But the process now has an end in sight.

If you’re interested in the wonky details, below are many of the specifics about what is changing in DC’s zoning.

What happened with accessory apartments

Tuesday night, the commission debated whether to allow accessory apartments in owner-occupied homes in low-density areas. Currently, higher-density residential zones allow two or more units in a single building (like a rowhouse), but low density zones (including some row house areas like Georgetown) allow only one unit except for an antiquated domestic worker provision.

While Chairman Anthony Hood tried to only permit accessory apartments if the owner goes through a special exception hearing, the rest of the commissioners voted to allow homeowners to have one accessory unit inside their home as a matter of right.

However, when it came to garages or carriage houses, the commission didn’t question the recent OP revision to only allow accessory units there after a special exception hearing. They adopted that rule with no discussion.

The commissioners did ease restrictions on the lot size and home size required to qualify for an accessory unit. They removed a minimum lot size rule altogether and shrank the required house size from a large 2,000 square feet to a more modest 1,200 square feet in R-2 and R-3 zones. They also removed a combined six-person cap on the total number of people in the primary residence and accessory apartment; instead, they will simply limit the number of people in the accessory apartment to three.

What happened with corner stores

The Zoning Commission approved a proposal to make some corner stores legal in medium-density residential zones for the first time since the city adopted its 1958 zoning code. Commissioner Marcie Cohen argued that corner stores were an important way to help seniors have easy access to daily needs.

However, through the years, the list of rules for what stores are allowable got longer and longer. What the Zoning Commission finally approved was only allowing small grocery stores as a matter of right if they devote a certain area devoted to perishable foods like dairy, fresh produce, fresh meats, and food that must be prepared at home. Beer and wine sales can’t exceed 15% of the floor area and requires a special exception hearing.

While these stringent rules will mean that few new corner grocery stores will sprout up, it is likely to inspire a few small entrepreneurs to open up small groceries. Beyond the small grocery stores that would qualify as matter of right, the rule would also allow other types of stores if they go through a special exception process with the Board of Zoning Adjustment.

What’s happening with parking

The commission agreed to reduce required parking by 50% for developments near transit (½ mile from Metro or ¼ mile from streetcar or bus priority corridor). In doing so, the Zoning Commission rebuffed the Office of Planning’s recent proposal to exclude bus priority corridors from the list of transit services that would qualify.

The commission also inserted one significant change that hadn’t been part of the earlier proposals: Developments that take advantage of the 50% reduction would also be ineligible for residential parking permits (RPP).

Current housing developments tend to contain one space for each two or three units voluntarily. The new rule will require just under three for developments away from transti (technically, one per three units after the first four). Cutting that in half means a minimum of one per six units near transit, clearly below market demand.

In effect, therefore, most developments will still park above the minimum, and allows the market to decide what is appropriate rather than forcing most buildings to build more. At easily $50,000 per parking space, this is an important way to make housing less expensive to build.

The commission did adopt OP’s suggestion to exclude the West End neighborhood from the Downtown zone that requires no parking, but seemed to support for removing requirements from downtown. However, Chairman Anthony Hood expressed skepticism toward any proposal that removed parking mandates entirely. The commission will consider the downtown zones tonight.

Commissioners also agreed to require one space for each single family home but waive that if no alley access is available. This is a fair compromise that will protect continuous sidewalks and not force curb cuts and driveways on a rowhouse block.

If a property owner feels it’s impractical to provide the required parking, it will also be easier to get an exception. The owner will now only need a “special exception” rather than the much more stringent “variance” standard that applies today. Either way, however, asking for a reduction requires a trip to the Board of Zoning Adjustment, which costs time and money.

The new special exception rule will allow the board to reduce parking requirements by considering the lack of demand, proximity to transit, or, in a provision added by Commissioner Marcie Cohen, the affordability of the housing. Any special exception would also require a Transportation Demand Management Plan, or traffic and parking demand reduction plan, which DDOT would need to approve.

Buildings can also share parking or put parking off-site to meet the parking requirements. If a project proposes building more than twice the minimum required for a building where the minimum is 20 spaces or more, the developer will have to add amenities like more bike parking, trees, car sharing spaces, electric car charging stations, or green roofs.

The commission will deliberate on the last few items tonight. After that, officials will create a new draft of the zoning code for one more round of public comment.

Since 2000, the District has generally required that when it sells publicly-owned land, part of the deal include new affordable housing for lower-income residents. But more recently, that commitment has waned. A bill in the DC Council could rejuvenate it by requiring affordable housing in city land development deals.

The trend of weakening the city’s commitment to affordable housing reached a new level last May, when the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED) picked a proposal to develop a city-owned half acre at 5th & I Streets NW.

While the bidders who proposed housing offered some affordable housing in the new building, the winning proposal by Peebles Corp. and the Walker Group put a hotel, condos, and a dog spa in the Mount Vernon Triangle while offering to build affordable housing somewhere else — perhaps at a site it owns in Anacostia, about 3 miles away.

DC needs affordable housing, and there are good reasons to build it inside developments on public land instead of far away. Mixed-income communities are valuable to a city that wants to be diverse and inclusive. Mixed-income neighborhoods give people of different backgrounds better access to jobs, transit, schools, and other amenities. These communities build opportunity for less affluent people.

Mixed-income neighborhoods also ensure that as central city neighborhoods get more valuable, not just the wealthiest people benefit. They encourage people to interact with neighbors with varying income levels, and help transportation like bicycling or streetcars, which run shorter distances, to not be only services for higher-income people.

While most traditional tools for creating affordable housing add new units in higher-poverty areas, DC’s land dispositions and inclusionary zoning policies are creating affordable housing in stronger real estate markets such as Columbia Heights, and even Chevy Chase.

When the DC government sells surplus parcels of public land for private development, it traditionally asks that at least some of the new housing built be affordable. Mayors Anthony Williams and Adrian Fenty sought and built substantial amounts of affordable housing in city-owned parcels like City Vista at 5th & K Streets NW or the new housing around the Columbia Heights Metro station. Unfortunately, the Gray administration has generally asked for far less affordability in public land deals.

The Peebles/Walker proposal represented yet another step away from the goal of mixed-income communities.

There’s still time to revisit this poor decision, and fix the longer-term problem of the city’s faltering commitment to affordable housing in public land deals. The DC Council will need to approve the 5th and I deal. Economic Development committee chair Muriel Bowser and her colleagues on the council should reconsider this deal.

And if it approves the pending bill, the council will set a clear policy that future land dispositions need a substantial amount of affordable housing on site. That bill, introduced by Ward 5 Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, will require that any deal include 20-30% of its housing at an affordable level for low-income households.

For rental units, that means households earning between 30% and 50% of Area Median Income, or just under $30,000-$50,000 per year for a family of three. Units could be sold to owners earning between 50% and 80% AMI, or just under $50,000-$78,000 per year for a family of three.

The bill, and an action by the council to reject the 5th and I proposal, would restore DC’s commitment to affordable housing and not waste the rare opportunities to get a project that promotes mixed-income communities when DC sells off land.

Top image: Design for the winning 5th and I building. Image from the developers.

Prince George’s County officials want everyone to know that the county is serious about transit-oriented development and making the most of its Metro stations. A promise to plan needed streets, sidewalks and parks around a short list of stations could be an important change to county spending that’s been focused on big-ticket road projects.

The county has been lobbying hard to get the FBI headquarters at the Greenbelt Metro station. Next week, officials break ground on a new Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development headquarters at the New Carrollton station. And the county has committed to locate a $650 million hospital at Largo Town Center station.

All are examples of the county’s strategy targeting five Prince George’s Metro stations: Largo, New Carrollton, Prince George’s Plaza, Branch Avenue, and Suitland. The county will speed up the approval process around these sites and offer financial incentives for transit-oriented development.

The county has also committed to plan infrastructure such as streets, sidewalks, and parks around each station. For the last few years, the county’s requests to the state government for transportation projects listed infrastructure at Metro stations, but did not make a detailed request. County officials now are committing to assessing specific station area needs, to make sure that infrastructure at Metro stations are in the line for funding from the county, state, or other sources. The current draft of the county’s 20-year land use plan also calls to revise the county’s capital project lists to align with its transit-oriented development priorities.

But apart from the Purple Line, which isn’t entirely in the county, the lion’s share of local and state funds continue to flow to expensive road widening, interchanges and other facilities that chase sprawl.

The county has won a state commitment to spend $150 million on an interchange at Suitland Parkway and MD-4, and a new interchange for MD-210 (Indian Head Road) at Kerby Hill Road for $100 million. The Suitland and MD-4 (Pennsylvania Avenue) interchange feeds develop­ment at the 6,000-acre greenfield Westphalia project, which is a bad deal for the county.

The county’s top request from the state this year is to fund another interchange for MD-210, which could cost close to $100 million. The complete plan for 7 interchanges along MD 210 prices at more than $600 million. Those numbers dwarf the $26 million the state committed last year for pedestrian and bicycle improvements.

Rushern Baker’s administration’s pledges to help spur development at priority Metro stations are very welcome. Residents are hoping to see them follow through.

For more than 10 years, we’ve discussed what kind of development at the Takoma Metro station would make this station a lively, safer place. A new plan for a residential building does just that, while offering a compromise to neighbors concerned about open space and parking.

Since 2000, WMATA has attempted to develop the area around the Takoma station. Last year, developer EYA proposed building about 200 apartments on a surface parking lot. The building would have 3 stories on Eastern Avenue and step up to 4 toward the train tracks. It would replace most of the parking, only about half of which is used at one time.

The plan keeps the existing 2.5 acre green space open, and offers some enhancements to make it more usable. The proposed building and residents overlooking the site will help foster a safer, more pedestrian-friendly environment by orienting the building to the bus drive, with entrances and windows facing the lane. Previous plans for live-work units or retail space have been dropped because of the weak market for retail at the site.

A 2006 plan that later stalled out offered about 90 townhouses and a one acre village green, but no replacement for the Metro parking, which is only for short term use. While the attractive townhouse and inviting village green were worth pursuing, I always thought this site would be better for an apartment building.

Image from EYA.

Then and now, some neighbors in both Takoma and the adjacent city of Takoma Park, which sits across Eastern Avenue, have opposed the project. In 2006, both supporters and opponents gave the developer grief about building homes with 2-car garages at a Metro station. But many critics also said that WMATA should replace all of the existing parking, in addition to preserving the whole 2.5 acre open space in front of the station and adding more bus bays.

The new plan responds to nearly all of the major criticisms, while at the same time more than doubling the amount of housing originally proposed. Now, opponents mostly object to the potential building’s height, even though it is on a block with other 3-story apartment buildings, all of which face single-family houses.

The proposal’s modest scale is in sync with the downtown district’s eclectic variety of buildings. EYA has already agreed to make the building shorter and reduce the number of units from 266.

At a March 13 WMATA committee meeting about the project, the board members incorporated amendments that the city of Takoma Park requested into its resolution to move the project forward. This Thursday, the WMATA Board will vote on an agreement with EYA to pursue the project, and to hold an official public hearing.

If WMATA approves the project, it will go to the DC Zoning Commission, which will have an opportunity to refine the design in its review process. Neighbors will have ample opportunity to raise their concerns about any aspect of the proposal then.

Like with any proposal, there is room for more improvement. The proposal offers much less parking for residents than before, which makes sense for a site next to a Metro station. But it could be lower still, since this is the transit agency’s land and the point is to build housing for more transit customers.

The new proposal offers residential parking at about 0.7 spaces per unit, down from 1.5 to 2 spaces per unit in the townhouse proposal. It would be sensible for WMATA to require that developers on their property to build less parking and offer their residents incentives to ride transit and use carsharing. That makes it easier to market the building to transit-oriented households who rely much less on personal cars.

The other important way the WMATA Board could improve this project is to honor the DC Council’s 2002 request that 20% of any housing at this site be set aside for households making 30%, 60%, and 80% of the area median income. This is still the right commitment for a property that the public transit agency and District of Columbia control, and our need for more affordable housing has only grown in the intervening years.

It’s been a long time coming, but this proposal for the Takoma Metro station will make downtown Takoma a better place for everyone. It will help a greater number of people use transit, have daily access to local shopping, and live with a lower carbon footprint. This is exactly where our region should be growing, and where we can accommodate more people who seek a transit-oriented lifestyle.

If you agree, ask the WMATA Board to move ahead with this project. Click here to let them know.

When the District government bids out city-owned property for development, it asks for affordable housing to be part of the deal, but how much is enough? Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie is proposing that 20-30% of the housing in any such deal be affordable for low-income households.

On properties that DC has offered for development, like Parcel 42 in Shaw or the Hine School on Capitol Hill, the city has a great opportunity to not only create and enrich walkable neighborhoods, but receive additional benefits for residents as part of the deal between the city and the developer.

One of the greatest needs we have right now is to increase the supply of affordable housing. But how do we best maximize affordable housing in public land deals and do so in a way that’s the best deal for the city and residents?

One in five DC households spends more than half of their income on housing, a severe housing burden, according to the DC Fiscal Policy Institute. Nearly all renters with this severe housing cost burden earn less than half of the area median income (AMI), or less than $48,300 a year for a family of three.

The purpose of McDuffie’s bill is to ensure that DC fully leverages the deals involving city-owned land to address the continuing challenge of housing affordability for low- and moderate-income households. Under the bill, when DC sells or leases public land for private multifamily residential development, at least 30% of the units would be affordable if the project is close to a Metro station or major transit line. Developments elsewhere in the city must include 20% affordable units.

Affordable rental units would be available to households earning between 30% and 50% of AMI, or just under $30,000 and $50,000 per year for a family of 3. Owner-occupied affordable units would be priced for households earning between 50% and 80% AMI, or just under $50,000 and $78,000 per year for a family of 3.

McDuffie’s bill would allow the city to subsidize the cost of the affordable units by selling or leasing the land at a discount, allowing the developer to pass on the savings to buyers or renters. If the land value is not sufficient to subsidize the required units, the bill provides for the District’s Chief Financial Officer to certify that the alternative proposal nonetheless maximizes affordability, taking into account all available subsidies.

DC’s Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) policy requires developers to set aside units in new construction for low- and moderate-income households. But zoning commissioners say the units may be priced too high for those families who truly need affordable housing.

During a discussion Wednesday night on the zoning code rewrite, DC Zoning Commissioners said that they are ready to revisit the income requirements for IZ units, which are priced for households making 50% or 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI). For a family of 3, that equals about $50,000 and $78,000, respectively.

If $78,000 for a family of 3 sounds high to you, that’s because it is. The DC Fiscal Policy Institute has often pointed out that the biggest need for affordable housing is at the 50% AMI level and below. And commissioners agree that an 80% AMI target is too high to address the needs of most families who find themselves priced out of DC’s rising market.

IZ units begin to enter the market

After adopting the policy in 2006, the Fenty administration delayed its implementation until 2009, following the housing market crash. By then, many already-approved projects had stalled. As the housing market recovered, these grandfathered projects, which didn’t have inclusionary zoning units, moved through the construction pipeline.

One of those projects is The Louis at 14th and U streets NW, where a new Trader Joe’s is slated to open soon. The original design for the project included IZ units, but they were eliminated due to the delay in implementation. Meanwhile, across the street is another sizable residential project that will also be completed soon, but since it was approved later, it has IZ units.

Only now are significant numbers of IZ units entering the market. According to the DC Office of Planning, as of July there were 265 IZ units on the market or about to be. That’s about 11% of a total 2,404 units subject to the IZ law. Over the next several years, the pipeline is likely to contain about 1,000 IZ units.

Of the 265 IZ units the DC Office of Planning (OP) is tracking, 85% will be affordable for households making 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI), while the remaining 15% will be affordable for households making 50% AMI.

Housing market has changed since IZ began

At Wednesday’s hearing, Zoning Commissioner Michael Turnbull asked OP if it would be feasible to require a larger set aside than the current 8-10%. Planning Director Harriet Tregoning indicated that they could look at it, and that the policy might be able to offer additional bonus density. And Office of Planning Deputy Director Jennifer Steingasser said that her agency is planning to introduce a separate discussion on revisions to IZ regulations in January to address concerns about income targeting and other issues.

DC’s real estate values are higher than they were before the housing bust, when the Zoning Commission adopted the IZ policy. This means there’s more value in the bonus density that IZ gives a development as compensation for the cost of units rented or sold below market rate.

Not only does the current policy require builders to set aside IZ units based on income level, but it also distinguishes between high-rise and low-rise development. For high-rise buildings, which are more costly to construct and are generally 6 stories or higher, developers only have to set aside 8% of their units, and price them for households at the 80% AMI level.

But for low-rise construction with typically 5 or fewer stories, the set aside requirement is 10%, and the income targets are split between 50% and 80% AMI. Commissioner Peter May asked OP if this distinction gives developers an incentive to seek high-rise designation for projects that could also qualify as low-rise construction, and Steingasser said it does.

Housing prices in DC continue to rise. Despite a number of administrative problems that the city is still working to manage, IZ can offer an important source of new affordable homes and help preserve mixed-income neighborhoods.

After a rocky start, DC’s new affordable housing program, Inclusionary Zoning (IZ), is getting on track. It’s one of many policies needed to address DC’s growing affordability gap. In many affluent parts of town, it may be the only new affordable housing available.

IZ requires developers to set aside 8 to 10% of new housing in projects with more than 10 units for households making between 50 and 80% of the area median income (AMI), or incomes of $42,778 and $69,530 for a household of two. One-bedroom apartments in the program rent for between $1,006 and $1,610 a month, while similar condos sell for between $116,600 and $220,100. It’s similar to Montgomery County’s Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit program, which began in 1974.

Inclusionary Zoning, a national best practice, uses a zoning bonus to pay for additional affordable units in new residential developments. The subsidy for the affordable units is created through a density bonus, allowing more units than could otherwise be built there. This compensates the developer while saving the city money.

IZ also integrates below-market-rate homes into a larger, market-rate development as a matter of course. Mixed-income housing has long been recognized as having many advantages over exclusively affordable developments. Mixed-income housing in high-demand areas offer lower-income residents access to a higher level of services and amenities than is usually available in areas where affordable housing is concentrated.

It offers an important tool for creating and sustaining economically integrated neighborhoods. It helps ensure some level of diversity of housing choices in areas where demand is strong and growing, such as close to Metro stations, major bus or streetcar corridors, areas with good public schools, or close to downtown DC. The policy is designed to create below-market rate units wherever new housing is being built and keeps them affordable for the life of the building.

Unlike many other affordable housing programs, where low income housing tends to cluster in high poverty areas, IZ units around the country are predominately located in low-poverty neighborhoods. In DC’s Ward 8, home to many low-income residents, as much as 90% of the housing in some census tracts is subsidized. But a 2012 study of Montgomery County demonstrates that IZ enables children from low-income families to live in more affluent neighborhoods and have access to high-performing schools.

Barriers to implementation

For all its benefits, DC has struggled to implement IZ since units began coming onto the market two years ago. The program’s rigid implementation regulations made it cumbersome for the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) to administer, and the program was severely understaffed as well. In addition, more restrictive Federal Housing Administration (FHA) lending standards made it next to impossible for buyers to obtain mortgages for affordable housing. The first two units to come on the market didn’t sell after sitting on the market, and the developer responded by suing the city.

But today, the city is making progress. DC has changed the standard covenant in mortgages for IZ units that release any price constraints in the event of a foreclosure, as required by the FHA. DHCD is considering measures to recoup the public subsidy in the unit that would be consistent with FHA rules.

The city is also making the process for marketing and awarding IZ units to buyers and renters more flexible. Today, DHCD awards units through a lottery, which the agency has struggled to implement, finding it to be a time-consuming process, and has failed to build a sufficient list of eligible and interested applicants. Under the new regulations, developers can use the lottery or create their own DHCD-approved marketing plan to find and select applicants for IZ units.

Finally, the city is moving to address the program’s staffing issues by getting additional assistance from nonprofits. DHCD plans to add capacity from experienced nonprofits to give low-income home buyers more help during the buying or renting process as well as long-term stewardship of the units. DHCD hopes to have new nonprofit assistance in place by October 1.

The construction pipeline is swelling with residential projects subject to IZ requirements, and IZ units are starting to enter the market in large numbers. We have proof that private residential projects with IZ units can get financed, and that IZ units can be leased and sold. While the program still faces many challenges, we can learn how to make it perform better and deliver more mixed-income housing opportunities throughout the city.

Looking ahead

Like other IZ programs across the country, DC’s faces many challenges. Montgomery County’s nearly 40 years of experience shows that programs need adjusting and refining over time. One of the key concerns for future action in DC is getting more deeply affordable housing.

In the current pipeline, just 15% of IZ units will be set aside for households making less than 50% of AMI, far short of the 50% housing advocates had originally hoped for. Once the program is running smoothly, the Zoning Commission should consider ways to create more “very affordable” units.

Some of the program’s challenges don’t have easy fixes, but DC can find reasonable solutions. Addressing these challenges will take the hard work and good will of activists, developers, and public officials. Given the benefits of mixed income housing in walkable, bikeable neighborhoods close to transit, and the growing need for more affordable housing choices, making IZ in DC work is worth the effort.

Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker made the smart growth choice early this week, selecting the Largo Town Center Metro Station for a new $650 million, 259-bed regional medical center.

Photo by the author.

The decision caps a year-long campaign by the Coalition for Smarter Growth and community smart growth advocates to demonstrate the benefits of putting the new hospital at a Metro station. It will replace the existing Prince George’s Hospital Center in Cheverly.

Operator Dimensions Healthcare will announce its official decision tomorrow. The organization’s full board will vote on the recommendation for a new hospital site after its executive committee meets today.

With a projected influx of over 2000 workers each day, the new hospital will spur mixed-use development at one of Prince George’s 15 mostly-underutilized Metro stations. Thousands of workers and visitors in this transit-accessible location presents a prime opportunity to create a walkable, mixed-use facility that could ultimately anchor a vibrant new downtown for Prince George’s.

During the selection process, officials seriously considered rival site Landover Mall, which is over a mile away from any Metro station. From the beginning, placing the hospital at the shuttered mall seemed to be a given, especially considering that the University of Maryland Medical Systems Corporation was rumored to seek a site with 120 acres. In the end, a much smaller site with Metro access emerged as an important component for the winning site.

There are major economic, environmental, and social justice advantages to putting the hospital at a Metro station. While much hospital construction of the last 50 years has been increasingly spread out on large campuses, many new successful hospital centers take advantage of leading urban designs, compact footprints, access to transit, and mixed-use environments.

Area around Largo Metro considered for possible site(s). Map courtesy Prince George’s County.

Smart growth advocates have pushed hard to encourage Prince George’s officials to choose such a location for the medical center. Together with leading hospital design and construction experts, the Coalition for Smarter Growth released a series of case studies to encourage officials to choose the Largo site in February.

Building on the momentum of those case studies, the Coalition for Smarter Growth delivered a petition with over 1000 signatures and sent hundreds of emails to county officials asking that the hospital be placed at a Metro station. In February, a community meeting drew over 300 Prince George’s residents in overwhelming support for a Metro-accessible medical center.

The path to a smart growth hospital is not over yet. Many decisions can happen during the design and construction phase that will advance or diminish the positive impact the medical center can have on the county. The IRS and Census Bureau headquarters at the New Carrollton and Suitland Metro stations are prime examples of “what not to do” when locating a major employer at a Metro station.

Despite future hurdles and a history of sprawl projects like Konterra and Westphalia, this decision shows the Baker administration’s and state’s commitment to smart growth and transit-oriented development. Putting the new regional medical center at Largo Town Center pursues the promise of real transit-oriented economic development with a more than half-billion dollar investment.

The effort offers Prince George’s the opportunity to take advantage of existing transit connections not only to provide better access to quality healthcare, but to build the kind of mixed-use district that study after study shows is where people want to live, work, and play. This regional medical center can be a true catalyst for that kind of healthy smart growth development.

If you live in Prince George’s and think this is a good decision, you can take a moment to thank County Executive Baker for his leadership and smart choice here.

Prince George’s County wants to encourage growth in the right places by speeding up the approval process for transit-oriented development. The county council unanimously passed a bill last week that just might do it.

Developers have often said they don’t want to do business in Prince George’s because of its lengthy and unpredictable development review process. Bill CB 20 creates a fast-track development review process for projects within ½ mile of the county’s 15 Metro stations and the Bowie MARC station.

Projects are eligible for the speedier process if the Planning Board finds they meet best practices for urban design, like mixing housing with retail and making engaging streetscapes.

The bill aims to increase transit ridership, reduce auto dependency, and encourage walking for more trips. It’s one of several recommendations county planners say could draw more investment to the county’s Metro station areas.

Concerned about attracting unwanted commercial uses, the bill contains a long list of uses that are not eligible for the expedited review, including adult entertainment, liquor stores, pawn shops, strip malls, and drive-throughs.

An earlier version of the bill would have eliminated most requirements for public meetings or site plan review. This could have potentially rushed low-quality projects to approval without giving the Planning Board and the public enough time to review proposed projects.

Not surprisingly, many people opposed it, and the County Council tabled the bill last year before putting together a roundtable to discuss ways to improve incentives for transit-oriented development. The current bill combines 2 overlapping versions councilmembers Eric Olson and Mel Franklin submitted earlier this year.

The bill’s most important feature is streamlining the review process. It prevents the County Council from arbitrarily dragging out the process, a power they’ve abused in the past that creates uncertainty and discourages developers from working in the county. Developers say that the unpredictability of approvals in Prince George’s County often makes it not worth the time and money spent there.

While the current bill shortens the review process, it still gives the Planning Board and members of the public enough time to offer feedback. If the Planning Board approves a proposal, the County Council has a few days to decide whether or not to review it as well. Project applicants or residents can also use this time to appeal the board’s decision.

Bill CB 20 is just one of many actions Prince George’s County has taken to encourage investment at Metro stations. Recently, county officials have also reduced the impact fees developers pay to support schools and public safety. Economic analysts say excessive fees discourage investment altogether, meaning the county won’t even receive the fees it seeks to collect.

Another element of ensuring development goes at Prince George’s Metro stations is having a good countywide plan. There is a town meeting this Saturday, 10 am-1 pm at the University of Maryland, to work on a plan for the county’s growth over the next 20+ years. You can help push for a plan that works in concert with this legislation to encourage TOD at Metro station sites.